Ottawa fled responsibility for reserve schools

Elise Stolte, edmontonjournal.com02.07.2014

John Janvier, left, and Leona Makokis, right, stand in front of Blue Quills First Nations College near St. Paul, Alta., in 2001. The old building, a former residential school run by the Grey Nuns, was their home for much of their childhood.

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EDMONTON - Kids threw stones at 11-year-old Leona Makokis on her first day in the St. Paul school.

They touched her jacket and screamed "Squaw germs!" The other girls sat on the opposite side of the classroom.

She hated the off -reserve school and came home in tears so many times, her mother forbade her from talking about it anymore. It was too negative.

That was in 1957. A federal report had recommended sending aboriginal children to provincial schools to increase assimilation. Federal officials transferred Makokis from Blue Quills residential school on the Saddle Lake reserve, 150 kilometres northeast of Edmonton, to the nearest town.

Despite the abuse and prejudice, Makokis persevered and graduated, but most of her friends dropped out along the way.

Stories like hers go a long way toward explaining why aboriginal people thought getting local control of education was so important, she says. It set the stage for protests in 1970, sparked by Ottawa's decision to close Blue Quills and send all of the reserve students to St. Paul.

When community members staged a sit-in at the school, dissidents in the community doubted the wisdom of taking over education. But the experience, first with residential schools and then provincial schools, had been so bad that when an elder stood to address the critics at the protest, he simply asked the several hundred present if anyone had a high school diploma.

No one stood. He asked if anyone even had Grade 8. Only one person rose.

"We can't do any worse by taking over this school," he told the crowd.

That moment brought unity to the protesters, says Makokis, and by the end of the year, Saddle Lake became the first band in Canada to take over its school.

By the late 1980s, almost every other band had followed. In Alberta only one federal school remains -- the LeGoff School in Cold Lake.

The problem was that nothing in the Indian Act committed Ottawa to do anything more to help First Nations develop the fledgling schools, says Al Rollins, former regional education manager for Indian Affairs and current chief executive for the Kee Tas Kee Now Tribal Council in north central Alberta.

In fact, native-run schools weren't, and aren't, mentioned in any federal or provincial legislation at all.

"What happened? Dump and run, that's what happened," says Rollins.

Indian Affairs stopped collecting data from the schools beyond the number of students enrolled in the fall. They collected no numbers on attendance, academic performance or even graduation rates.

Indian Affairs had 30 employees in a regional education directorate for Alberta in 1989, just after the bulk of the schools had transferred over. By the late 1990s, they had just six.

In 1996, Ottawa capped the money being sent to the regions, limiting increases to one or two per cent per region regardless of how quickly aboriginal populations grew. The result was low student achievement and a damning report from the auditor general in 2000.

Indian Affairs had no way of measuring how the roughly $1.1-billion education system was operating, the report said. Schools were required to fill out self-evaluations, but many were missing and the department could not show it followed up on any of the problems identified in those that had been filled out. The report concluded: "Remedial action is urgently needed."

But the ministry responded so slowly, a followup audit in 2004 found next to no improvement. The gap in educational achievement between First Nations and the rest of Canadians had actually widened.

Now the ministry's education department is finally growing again, mostly through reorganization within the department, say current regional staff in Canada Place in downtown Edmonton. Significantly, two data technicians were recently moved back into the unit.

Data are essential for any effort to convince the federal Treasury Board to increase funding, says Rollins. That was a major barrier when he spent a year seconded to Ottawa in the early 2000s developing a program to improve schools. Rollins's project derailed as focus shifted to the 2005 Kelowna Accord, which ended up being an empty promise.

Ottawa told national aboriginal leaders it would nearly double the education budget, but the Liberal government fell days later. The Conservatives criticized the promise for including no structural change and left it out of their first budget.

Instead, the Harper government rolled out its $268-million, five-year plan in 2008, funding only those schools that can commit to and meet incremental goals for literacy, numeracy and attendance. Indian Affairs still has no way of measuring academic success across the nation.

In Saddle Lake, Leona Makokis overcame the stones and insults encountered at the St. Paul school. She went on to become a teacher herself, earn her doctorate in education and become the head of Blue Quills First Nations College.

The Saddle Lake school now is more welcoming for students, with a significant number of trained aboriginal teachers. But it still struggles with attendance and academics, struggles to adapt the provincial curriculum to Cree culture in a way that engages students and keeps them learning, she says.

If they could build the structure and find the support, "our own people could be doing the research to find out best practices.

"I listened to the dreams and aspirations of my mother and relatives," she says. But too often they were set up for failure.

Who signed it? First Nations treaty chiefs, the federal minister of Indian Affairs, the ministers of Alberta Education and Alberta Aboriginal Relations

When? Feb. 24, 2010

What was promised? Nine general commitments about funding, long-term planning, children who aren't in school, parental engagement, teacher recruitment and retention, cultural awareness among Albertans, tuition agreements with the province, legislation and establishment of an education resource centre.

What happens next? Leaders are expected to confirm their priorities this fall.

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